


Sundown on a Shady Grin

by gigantic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-24
Updated: 2005-12-24
Packaged: 2018-11-01 03:38:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10913532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigantic/pseuds/gigantic
Summary: Then and now.





	Sundown on a Shady Grin

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Joseph Arthur's “Stumble and Pain."

Out here, the air smells like cut grass, wet and fresh. Sam scratches his arms, then elbows Dean in the side because he's been humming the same stupid song for twenty minutes, pausing after the last two notes and picking it right up again.

"Hey, watch it --"

"Is that -- are you humming Alice Cooper?" 

In this light, Sam can't see Dean's face clearly, more the moonlight glinting across the glaze of his eyes through trees. He sees Dean in angles and shadows.

Dean shrugs against the dirt, shoulders sliding up and down, back and forth. They haven't seen anything suspicious in over two hours, and Sam hasn't slept in thirty-six.

Dean sings, "I hope I didn't scare you," low and off-pitch, and kicks at Sam's right foot with his left. Ten feet in front of them, the lake stays still.

;;

At fifteen, Sam opened his mouth and kissed his brother in the middle of a cul de sac. It had been summertime, Sam remembers, because he couldn't believe the chills that shot through his spine when his skin felt so warm.

He never said, "Wait," just thought the word repeatedly, and instead knelt down afterwards to pick up the quarters he'd dropped.

;;

Dean talks about Stanford like college is something Sam woke up and decided to order for breakfast, because he had a taste for it. Some days, when he's running on an hour less sleep than even Sam has managed and half a cup of bitter, watery black coffee, he tells Sam to shut his mouth or ride in the goddamn trunk. He tells him the plan is perfect, that Dad is just fucking fine, and not everybody gets lucky enough to run to California, to ditch the only people that give a shit for fancier education, and a girlfriend who gave head good enough to make you forget to write home, and --

And usually Sam gives him the benefit of the doubt on those afternoons, but in a parking lot two miles outside of Canton, his knuckles collide with skin and bone hard enough to rattle shocks all the way through to Sam's shoulder. He apologizes automatically as Dean ducks forward even though Sam's still seething. He bends down to gauge the damage, and Dean keeps him at arm's length, hand pushing at Sam's thigh.

"Go to hell, Sammy," he spits, a mouthful of blood on the ground like a crude punctuation.

Sam shakes out his arm. He tries to shake off the hum in his fingers, saying, "Where the fuck do you think I am, Dean?" even if the land around him still looks a lot like Ohio.

Dean laughs into his sleeve and spits onto the gravel again before he angles his face up, hands on his knees. He says, "I thought this place looked familiar."

Sam feels a little manic when his resolve breaks, but his lips stretch despite himself, hand aching and bright red.

;;

At sixteen, Dean stuck his hand down the front of Sam's jeans at a gas station in Tustin. He snorted when Sam's body jerked in his seat, eyes darting toward the market windows where their Dad chatted up the clerk working graveyard shift. He said, "Oh, please, are you about to freak out?"

Sam said, "Ha fucking ha," but he glanced back toward the store one more time anyway before pressing his hand over Dean's through denim.

"Hm, someone's testy."

"And someone can suck my dick," Sam said and didn't clarify whether or not he was serious.

;;

From the ground, it's easier to talk shit. Sam stands watch from the side of the house while Dean wraps a hand around the drainpipe and uses the gate to hoist himself onto the roof. Leaves crackle and scatter down onto the driveway and Sam pushes a hand through his hair to knock a few from his head.

"I can't believe you're doing this," he says, throwing his voice skyward in a harsh whisper. "Just because you're not stealing doesn't erase the fact that you're still breaking into someone's house. To watch satellite TV."

"In that case, I'll make us sandwiches, too." Dean crawls across the panels and goes for the open window, widening the gap. "Get your lanky ass up here."

Sam says, "Dean--"

"Fine, stay down there and moralize yourself to death. The five thousand channels inside can keep me company."

As Dean climbs through, Sam abandons pretense and shouts out that Dean can't get by ripping people off forever. Dean leans out of the window, staring down, smirk slick and taunting. He says maybe not, but then again, he didn't think Sam would keep at his holier-than-thou hardworking everyman bullshit like Sam didn't kill for a living again forever either, but Dean had started to feel like he was losing that personal bet two months ago.

"That's completely different and you know it," Sam says, and Dean disappears behind sheer curtains but doesn't slam the window shut.

;;

At seventeen, Dean got a girlfriend he rarely talked about around the house. Sam didn't push for information. Instead, he flirted more with the girl in second period that dug the mystery behind a boy who spent more time absent than in class. He dated her through the holidays, Dean came home at three in the morning without blood and dirt on his clothes, and there wasn't actually much to discuss.

A week after New Year's, the streetlight outside their bedroom burned out. Sam couldn't see Dean at all when he came in, finally, the hours probably closer to sunrise than the sky indicated. Sam heard rustling in the dark, straining his eyes to get a glimpse just in case, and then the mattress caved more under Dean's weight as he sat astride Sam's waist.

He smelled like ash, his skin hot against rough palms. He muttered, "I shouldn't have--" and cut himself short, voice almost too loud to pass for whispers. Sam stabbed blunt nails into Dean's arm, saying, Christ, asshole; don't talk about it here, not now.

He added, panting, "I'm gonna fuck you."

Dean breathed open-mouthed against Sam's collarbone, shifting weight onto his knees as Sam dragged down his pants.

;;

Near the southern border, Sam's jaw throbs enough that he kicks a hole in wall in their motel room, plaster crumbling around his shoe. His tooth comes out in a mouthful of lettuce and turkey when they eat foot-long sandwiches bought from the deli down the street.

Dean asks, amused, "Whoa, how hard did that guy toss you?" 

That night, in Phoenix, this poltergeist has better aim than the bastard in Lawrence. Dean hollers and jams his heel into the bed over and over while Sam cauterizes the sliced skin across his left calf. He covers the majority of colorful vocabulary he's learned over the years, and Sam tells Dean he wouldn't get away with half the things he threatens to do, who cares how sharp his blade is, now hold still before he's chasing after Black Dogs in a wheel chair.

"Holy -- does the word 'finesse' mean anything to you?" Dean grinds through his teeth. He throws an arm across his forehead, wiping away sweat.

Sam starts counting to five in his head before reapplying the heat, explaining, "I know law, Dean, not bedside manner."

Dean laughs, swift breathless gasps. He says, "I don't know, you used to be pretty good with --"

Sam only makes it to four.

;;

At eighteen, Sam spent his first night in another unfamiliar bed, but this one he knew he'd come back to every night until it felt like home. The phone rang in the middle of the night, and Sam's roommate mumbled something unintelligible and threw a pillow across the room. Sam reached out and spoke gruffly into the receiver, dropping the phone onto floor, annoyed when no one answered him.

In the morning, he jerked off in the shower and didn't think at all about Kansas.

;;

The night Sam dreams about Dean, blistered and hollow-eyed, he packs the car at three in the morning. Dean curses and fumbles around in the dark, one leg in his jeans, because he has no idea why he's up at a time like this, and Sam must be out of his fucking --

"Dean. Now," Sam says. His voice drops, measured and intense. 

When the sun rises, Dean keeps breathing, asleep in the passenger seat. The rush of wheels over pavement feel likes escape, but by nightfall Sam finds he recognizes the mansion just off the exit -- the red front door and dirty brick -- plunging them into his nightmare.

In the aftermath, Sam checks Dean's pulse with wet hands, blood black in the dark. He leans too close, hopeful and frantic until he feels weak breaths gust across his face. 

Dean mumbles, lips blue, teeth pink, "Sammy, hey. I'm okay. Stop being a pansy," hacking between the words.

And Sam breathes hard enough for them both as he closes his eyes and imagines the world on fire. He says, "I was just trying to make sure you were dead before I did my victory dance," lying before he admits, "I'm sorry, Dean, fuck. They always come true, always," and scrapes his palms along the gravel.

;;

At twenty-two, Dean couldn't watch Sam's new life burn down after he pulled him out, yelling, and Sam couldn't look away.

On the road, miles and hours later, Dean reached across the close void to rest his palm at the top of Sam's shoulders, against his neck. His touch was heavy and supportive and mocking without actually being much at all, and because Dean didn't ask him how he felt -- how it all felt now after everything, Sam didn't have to say inevitable.


End file.
